Once a subject it seemed no one was talking about, candidates running for the Idaho House of Representatives in next week’s Republican primary are now saying just how they feel about so many children in their state dying from “faith-healing medical neglect.”

Due to the great work of child advocates, such as the nonprofit Protect Idaho Kids, many Idahoans are aware of this life-and-death issue. Tragically, religious exemptions in state laws permit parents who deny their children necessary medical care to avoid prosecution, even in cases of great suffering and death, as long as the parents claim they used only prayer as “treatment.” Learn more about the issue by going here.

With the primary happening on May 15, the Idaho Press-Tribune has posed this question to all candidates running for the state House of Representatives: Canyon County experiences the highest rate of child deaths due to faith healing in the state. How will you address it?Read More »

One year ago, the Child-Friendly Faith Project and local advocates began meeting with Sen. Lee Heider about a critical issue—Idaho’s failure to protect children from egregious ‘faith healing’ medical neglect. In evaluating his ability to be an advocate for children, the board of the CFFP agrees that the Senator deserves an ‘F.’

Lee Heider is Chairman of the Senate Health and Welfare Committee which was asked to consider a bill that aimed to protect children in Idaho from “faith-healing” medical neglect. Here’s why we believe Sen. Heider deserves a failing grade for his work on this urgent, life-and-death issue.Read More »

I do not wear clerical garb at all, because I see clericalism as one of the most prominent and important causes for this entire problem—the attitude that the clergy are somehow removed and above other Catholics and that we have to be protected at all costs.

—Rev. Thomas P. Doyle, canon lawyer and former papal ambassador

He told me that, because he was a man of God and he represented Christ in the flesh, it would be spiritual and natural for him to take care of me sexually. . . . But even though I felt that it was wrong, afterwards I thought, because [he] said he was a man of God and he brought up those things from the Bible, somehow, it was okay, or holy.

—Lindsay Tornambe, child sexual abuse survivor

Free the child's potential, and you will transform him into the world.

—Maria Montessori

Like many dynamic institutions, religion can be a source of great evil or unparalleled good. When we grasp God's grace -- or better, when we discover that we have been grasped by that grace -- it makes all the difference for us, and for our children.

—Mark Galli

A connected and educated populace . . . is bound to be disabused of poisonous beliefs, such as that members of other races and ethnicities are innately avaricious or perfidious; that economic and military misfortunes are caused by the treachery of ethnic minorities; that women don't mind to be raped; that children must be beaten to be socialized; that people choose to be homosexual as part of a morally degenerate lifestyle; that animals are incapable of feeling pain..